Fused imagery of multiple different sets of wavelengths of light such as Infrared, visible etc. is distorted, non-uniformly, focused, missaligned and rendered useless by excessive parallax. This degradation is heightened by a large depth of field and near camera imagery. Large depths of field images have excellent electronic fusion at specific ranges but not across the whole field due to parallax. Specifically, when objects are within a certain fixed range of a binocular color and IR camera, the parallax problem cannot be solved. In fact, this problem becomes worsened when more than two cameras are involved. This inovation holds fusion when imaging from a moving platform and while observing moving subjects traversing the debth of field.
Another problem with the prior art is the chromatic abberation. This is a type of distortion in which there is a failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same convergence point. It occurs because lenses have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light (the dispersion of the lens). The refractive index decreases with increasing wavelength. A typical example is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,781,127, in which the camera lenses are placed in front of the dichroic beam splitter which transmits thermal IR radiation and reflects visible/NIR/SWIR radiation.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide an optical image system that has a capbabliltiy of fusing images of various wavelengths while eliminating both the parallax effects and chromatic abberation.